In most cases, the solving of commercial problems involves processing large amounts of data. COBOL is particularly well suited to this task. COBOL programs are largely independent of the particular features of individual hardware systems. The language is laid down clearly and precisely in an official document issued by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) under the title
"American National Standard for Information Systems
- Programming Language COBOL -
ANSI X3.23-1985" and Addendum "ANSI X3.23a-1989, Intrinsic Function Module".
This is a revised version of the 1974 standard. The internal standard functions supported as of V2.1A of the compiler are described in the above Addendum.
The German standard version DIN 66028-1986 and the international standard version ISO 1989:1985 correspond to the American National Standard. The Intrinsic Functions by ANSI correspond to the international norm "ISO/IEC 1989 Amendment 1, Intrinsic Function Module".
For the purpose of description, the ANSI publication divides COBOL into a nucleus and eleven functional modules, of which five are optional (Report Writer, Communication, Debug, Segmentation, Intrinsic Functions). Each of these modules in turn contains one or two functional levels. The lower level of a module is a true subset of the higher level of the same module.
Since December 2002, the international standard ISO 1989:2002 has been valid for COBOL. This standard is similar to the ISO 1989:1985 standard except that it does not contain the previous subdivision into modules, and, on the other hand, Amendment 1, “Intrinsic Function Module“, and numerous new language elements have been added.
The COBOL2000 (BS2000) compiler supports the high ANS85 COBOL language set. The optional Report Writer and Segmentation language modules are also supported in accordance with the high level of ANS85.
In addition, the COBOL2000 (BS2000) compiler offers a large subset of the language functionality from the ISO 1989:2002 standard, which is now valid.
The optional Communication and Debug language modules, which have been dropped from the new standard, are not supported. In BS2000, these modules are replaced by the products openUTM and AID, respectively.